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KARACHI, June 23: In art you cannot be spoilt for choice. The reason for it is that no artist worth his salt (the emphasis is on the phrase ‘worth his salt’) can be compared to anyone else. Each has his own distinct identity, individual style of portraying things and bringing to the fore issues that either perturb him or make him feel exultant.

A group exhibition featuring works of 60-odd known and relatively less known artists commenced at the Ocean Art Gallery on Saturday. The show mostly contains paintings done in oil and acrylic.

It would be not wrong to discuss eminent artist Tassaduq Sohail first. His oil-on-canvas exhibits have a haunting feel to them mainly because of the peculiar-looking characters doused in rich colours.

An oil-on-paper piece by Mansoor Rahi makes the viewer admire his extraordinary skill; but a picture done in charcoal moved this writer the most. The grey contours, the shades and some figures create an effect which has an inexplicable gloominess about it.

Tanveer Shams’s versatility is also noticeable. The artist’s water colour paintings delineating architectural beauty of simple as well as ornate buildings is a delight, and at the same time an oil-on-canvas artwork carrying a certain degree of
abstraction is no less significant.

The mellow waterscapes by Ghalib Baqar astound the viewer with their precision of imagery. Despite the fact that in one exhibit he paints a yellowish picture and in another gives it a gentle blue shade, the result that he intends to glean out of the water imagery is the same. Abdul Haye, on the other hand, uses a similar theme from a dreamy perspective, and also impresses.

The one work that almost, if not totally, deviates rather wonderfully from the rest of the paintings is Askari’s poignant oil-on-canvas piece. The artist has created a part psychedelic, part illusory and part surrealist impression by intelligently using black and white colours (black as the background and white as the ghostly, agonised figure) with Tuscan red as the base. It is some work or art.

The exhibition, which has been organised by the Operation Theatre Welfare Society (Dots) Civil Hospital, will continue till June 25.